Wednesday, June 8, 2011

My little encounter with road bully

Road bullies! Have your ever encountered road bullies before? I had, and it was a year ago. I was not sure what’s triggered the guy to hassle me. Was it because I was slow on the fast lane? I don’t think so because there were many cars in front of me. Were I zigzagging in front of him? Definitely not because the left lane had many cars.

I was on the NPE Highway on the way back from work. Traffics were heavy. I was on the right lane since I’m heading down south. Most of the cars were moving slowly on both lanes when suddenly a black car behind me kept on flashing his headlights. I couldn’t move to the left lane as there were other cars. The impatient driver changed lane to the left and quickly cut right in front of me on the right lane.

Luckily, I was slow, and I was able to break on time. He then continued to hassle me where he kept on breaking his car break until we reached the Pantai Tol.

He stopped his car at the SmartTag lane, and he came out from his car. I stopped about 20 meters behind his car. He walked towards my car, and I was not sure what triggered me to react to him, I opened the car door. I didn’t go to him but stood next to my car.

He was shouting at me, and I asked him what was the problem. He kept on shouting, and I kept on staring at him. By this time, there were others cars passing by, and some stopped behind me. When he saw cars stopped behind my car, he walked back to his car, and he flipped his middle finger to me. I raised my hand, pointed it to my head and make empty gesture indicated that he had empty head. He glared at me, opened his car door and drove away.

Eventhough I looked calm I was shaking inside. I drove off, and Alhamdulillah, even though it was scary, nothing happened to me.

I was lucky that I only encountered a mild road bully, and I can’t think what would happen to me if I met the violent road bully. Would he kicked and slapped me? What if he has a weapon with him? Would he used it against me? I shuddered every time I think about it.

Some of the bad road bullies can really hurt you. They never think that their action is wrong. To them, they are always right, and they also has a very short fuse. Simple thing can trigger their anger.

Surprisingly some of these road bullies are mild-mannered guys. But when they are behind the wheel, they changed. Instead of becoming like a super hero, they become super villain and terrorizing people.

These road bullies need to learn to manage their anger. They need to get helps from the professionals. Don’t wait until it is too late.